Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Jenny leaned against the side of the old VW bus and stared into the rain. She deliberately ignored Carl, who was gesturing wildly to the service station attendant, trying to enact the idea that he wanted to fill the gas tank. The attendant, for his part, either genuinely couldn’t make sense of Carl’s charades or was enjoying the show too much to let on that he understood.

“Jen, help me out here.”

Jenny shrugged. “Sorry. Someone lost the phrase book.”

Two days ago Carl had managed to leave it somewhere in the Vatican. “Forget it,” he’d said when Jenny insisted they replace it. “We’ve been in Italy all summer. We’ll get by just fine.”

Why, Jenny wondered for the umpteenth time, hadn’t she just ignored Carl and bought another book? Why did she always go along with him? It had been her idea to spend the summer in Italy. She’d wanted to take an art history course in Florence, to study the great Renaissance painters. Instead, Carl found a bargain package in Rome, and she had spent three months staring at sculpture. The problem was, she didn’t like sculpture, not even Michelangelo’s. Sculpture seemed fixed to her, frozen. She couldn’t look at a statue without feeling sorry for the being trapped inside.

She knew now that she should never have gone to Rome. As Carl had said, it simply wasn’t her city. It was mobbed, confusing, too much of a hub. Everywhere there were flocks of nuns, droves of priests. The holy city was theirs. For Jenny, who had no religion except an innate, instinctive animism, Rome was too Catholic and Catholicism too macabre. The depictions of the crucifixion, the scenes of martyrdom, the relics of the saints’ bodies, all gave her nightmares. The omnipresence of the Church made her feel like an outsider. She didn’t belong.

That feeling of not belonging had only intensified with the arrival of Sasha. Sasha was everything Jenny wasn’t. She was tall and thin, with long, straight blond hair, perfectly sculpted features, and an icy blend of hauteur and strength that Jenny associated with the Norse Valkyries. It was easy to imagine Sasha hoisting dead warriors from the battlefield and not even noticing when her grasp loosened and they plummeted to worlds below. Sasha had come from Minneapolis, of all places, to model in Milan. Three months later, having appeared on the covers of a dozen fashion magazines, she’d decided that modeling was a bore. She’d left Milan for Rome at the invitation of a minor duke who wanted to ensconce her in his palazzo. He’d given her a French locket that had been in his family since the 1500s. It was a round disk of bright yellow gold edged with pearls, inscribed: L’amour dure sans fin. While the duke’s love may have lasted forever, Sasha’s didn’t. She’d left the palazzo two weeks later on the day she met Carl on the Spanish steps. Sasha, who called Carl Carlo, said she’d foreseen his coming into her life in a tarot reading. She said it was karma that they’d met, that their spirits had long been intertwined, that theirs was an ancient and powerful connection. Carl said Sasha was “mystical,” which Jenny translated to mean “weird but interesting.” Now they were driving through Tuscany, en route to Florence, where in three weeks time Jenny and Carl would catch their flight back to the States. The hows and whys of it were a mystery to Jenny, but somehow Sasha had invited herself along.

Jenny watched as the gas station attendant removed the gas pump from the VW and informed Carl he’d given him forty-five liters of petrol that cost 65,000 lire. Carl paled and said, “Jen, I need you to cough up some dinero here.” That was another thing about Carl. He was always broke.

Jenny reached into her pocket. She still had travelers’ checks left but was running low on cash. She needed to find an open bank. She handed Carl 15,000 lire, saying, “That’s all I’ve got right now, and it’s lire, not dinero.”

Carl took the money and traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. “Lire, dinero, drachma, yen,” he chanted in the voice that always made her feel like a princess favoring a pauper with her charms. “Does it really matter, Jenny-o? You know what I mean. You always do.”

Jenny’s irritation faded. Carl simply didn’t take things as seriously as she did. He was a lighter spirit, Sasha said, something Jenny sensed yet never put words to. But she’d always known that his gift to her was that he lent her a little of his ease, a little of his unshakable belief that no matter what, things would be all right. She remembered the first time they made love — afterward lying in his arms and him whispering, “You just sleep now, Jenny-o, ’cause everything’s going to work out fine”—and later waking up amazed that she actually believed it.

Carl counted out her 15,000 and raised one eyebrow. “That’s only twenty-eight thou.”

“Why don’t you see what Sasha can cough up?” Jenny suggested.

“Good idea,” Carl said, and walked around to knock on the back of the VW. Inside, Sasha had fashioned an elaborate bed for herself, covered in midnight-blue silk velvet. Carl emerged from the back of the bus a few minutes later with a handful of bills. He paid for the gas then pocketed the rest, making Jenny wonder just how much Sasha had given him.

He came around to where Jenny stood, wound a hand through her dark hair, drew her to him and kissed her on the mouth. “You feeling all right?” he asked gently. Jenny had woken up with a headache that morning.

“I’m better now,” she said.

He kissed her again. “I’m glad. So … if you’re feeling better … would you mind if Sasha rode up front for a while?”

It was a reflex by now to go along with whatever Carl wanted. Jenny almost said, “Sure, no problem,” but caught herself. Something inside her was simmering, something she’d been ignoring for the last two weeks.

“Actually, I would mind,” she said, and got back into the front of the bus.

She regretted her decision at once. The back of the bus may have been converted into Sasha’s private bedchamber, but the front, Carl’s domain, was a disaster. Carl often bragged that Chaos Theory was his moral and aesthetic code. What this actually meant was that he couldn’t be bothered to clean up after himself. Jenny, on the other hand, was meticulous by nature, a devotee of order. She took this difference between them to be a sign that she was Carl’s perfect mate. She might not be beautiful or artistic; she certainly didn’t have Sasha’s gift for exotic ennui; but she kept things organized. Without her, Carl wouldn’t find his way into his own vehicle. Despite her frequent attempts to clean it, the front of the bus was filled with Carl’s dirty laundry, remnants of yesterday’s lunch, and an assortment of maps, none of which even seemed to show the road they were on. The VW stank of cigarette smoke, damp socks, and overripe cheese. The smell was beginning to make Jenny queasy.

Carl got in beside her and pulled out onto the road. Sometime while they’d been at the filling station, dusk had turned to darkness. Jenny remembered how the rain had started earlier that day as they’d driven through a small walled village. She’d marveled at how the evergreen of the cypress trees became gray-green in the rain; how the red-tile roofs went dark as carnelian, and the sun-faded stone walls of the castello took on the grainy silver-brown of sand beside the sea. She’d never seen the Tuscan hills in sunlight. In the rain everything seemed deep and vibrant, as if the land leached color from the sky.

Carl turned on the windshield wipers. “The rain’s getting worse,” he said.

Jenny sat silently, grateful that he was driving. The road bent back on itself in a hairpin turn, and Carl remained calm as a Fiat barreled toward them then swerved out of their lane at the last possible moment.

“If you don’t mind telling me,” he said, “what have you got against Sasha?”

Jenny considered the question. She and Carl had been going out for two years, living together since last Christmas when Carl was kicked out of his dorm. Jenny assumed that they’d marry, probably next year, as soon as they graduated. They were total, complementary opposites. Yin and yang, they needed each other. Then Sasha had draped herself across their lives like a beautiful filmy curtain, and something had changed. He’d never said so, but Jenny knew that Carl now saw her through the curtain of Sasha; even more unnerving, Jenny had caught glimpses of herself through that same veil.

“Why is she coming to Florence with us?” Jenny asked. She waited for his answer, wondering how he’d phrase the inevitable evasion.

Nothing could have prepared her for Carl’s blunt answer. “I asked her to come. I think I’m in love with her.”

Jenny shut her eyes, suddenly nauseatingly sick. Her head was pounding, and there was a giant hollow space between her ribs that felt as if it had been eaten away by acid.

Carl kept driving, his eyes on the red taillights ahead of them. “Look,” he said at last. “It’s not that I don’t care for you. You’re a wonderful woman, better than I deserve, and we’ve had some good times—”

“But—”

“But …” His voice trailed off.

“There’s Sasha now,” Jenny said helpfully.

“It’s not Sasha. It’s you and me.”

Jenny knew that what she was about to say sounded like the lyrics of a bad country-and-western song, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I thought we loved each other. What was all that affection? Did I imagine that?”

Carl spoke in a perfectly even tone. “Of course you didn’t imagine it. What we had was real. It’s just that we’re so … different. I mean, we couldn’t have lasted.”

“We couldn’t?” Jenny’s voice had become an embarrassing croak. Princess into frog, the transformation was easier than anyone would have guessed.

“There’s … stuff I can’t get past with you.”

Jenny wondered if he was fed up with her need to keep things clean and orderly. Or maybe he was tired of her ragging on him for being so irresponsible about money. And she had gotten bitchy about Rome. Carl, who was raised Catholic, did not appreciate her riff about the Vatican’s obscene wealth.

“I mean, you’re not bad-looking,” he explained, “but your hair’s always all frizzy, and face it, Jen, you’ve got a weight problem. You’re never gonna lose those ten pounds you always swear you’ll work off.”

Outside, rain coursed down the windshield in cold, slippery streams. Jenny couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t crying. She bit down through her lower lip, welcoming the taste of her own blood.

“I see,” she said when she could keep her voice steady. “And now you’ve got Sasha, who’s—”

“Terribly beautiful,” Carl said quietly.

It was a perfect description. There was something terrible, uncanny, about Sasha’s pale beauty. Jenny thought of the Valkyries again.

“And I’m not terribly beautiful. Obviously. You can’t get past my hair and my weight. So you might as well dump me and take up with Sasha. It’s very efficient, really. Out with the old, in with the new.” She turned to face him. “Have you fucked her yet?”

“That’s not what this is about. Sasha and I have had some very intense talks — about fate and eternity and about how you can be together without end, and—”

“Have you?”

Staring straight ahead, he nodded.

“God, you’re a shit. And I’m so incredibly stupid. A three-year-old would have seen it coming, but not—”

He reached out a hand to touch her.

“Don’t,” she said, the nausea almost overpowering. “Don’t touch me.”

Carl sighed, the sound of the long-suffering, then made one of his remarkable recoveries. “Jen,” he said conversationally, “when was the last time you saw a sign for Florence?”

“Firenze,” she corrected him automatically. She thought a moment. “Not since we left the autostrada.”

“That was hours ago.”

“I guess.” She’d lost track of the time. Earlier that day her watch had died.

“Well, I know you’re mad as hell, and I don’t blame you, but do you think you could check a map and try to figure out where we are?”

Jenny sat unmoving, watching the wipers futilely pushing at the rain.

Carl held out the only temptation left him. “Look, we can get separate rooms in Florence. The quicker we get there, the quicker you’re rid of me.”

“You are such a shithead.”

“I know.”

Jenny reached into her pack for the flashlight she always carried (Carl liked to tease her about being so well-prepared; he swore she’d been a Boy Scout in an earlier life), and opened the map of Toscana. Her head was pounding. The lines of the map swam before her eyes as she struggled to read it. “Do you remember any of the village names on the last sign we saw?”

“Deviazione?”

“That means detour, you idiot. Didn’t you ever look at the phrase book?” The frog again, crude and croaking. Before tonight she never would have called him an idiot.

“Listen,” Carl said, “I got us through Rome just fine. I don’t remember you driving there. And who figured out the train schedule to Sicily, not to mention—”

Jenny tuned out his list of conquests, trying to visualize the names on the last sign she’d seen. There were three towns. San Vittorio, Arezzo, San Martino? Something like that. They were supposed to be heading toward Arezzo and from Arezzo toward Firenze, but just after they’d turned onto the road toward Arezzo they’d hit the deviazione. She studied the snaking lines on the map and found at least four San Martinos, all between San Gimignano and Arezzo. They could be anywhere.

She peered out through the windshield. Rain and darkness. Not even lightning to break the dark. Only the occasional flickering light of a candle at a roadside shrine.

“Well?” Carl said.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be reading the map? For a navigator, you—”

“I am not your navigator,” Jenny said clearly.

“Well, then what are you besides fucking useless?”

She hadn’t thought he could hurt her any more than he already had. Wrong again.

She jerked forward as Carl suddenly braked hard and the VW stalled out. A sheep stood in the glare of the headlights, sodden and mud-streaked, and showing absolutely no inclination to move.

Jenny felt a wave of relief go through her. She didn’t have to wait until Florence. She grabbed her pack and opened her door.

“Ciao, Carlo,” she said, and stepped out into the storm.

The rain continued to beat down, cold and determined. Jenny figured she’d probably walked three miles since jumping out of the VW. At first she’d been too angry to even notice distance; it hadn’t mattered that it was dark or wet or that she had no idea of where she was. It felt good to pit herself against the Tuscan hills, to walk until her muscles burned and her pulse raced. Some part of her still couldn’t believe that Carl hadn’t come after her. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He was letting her go.

Jenny flicked on her flashlight as something dark and solid loomed in the darkness. She was standing about ten feet away from a tall, stone house. She racked her memory for phrases from the missing phrase book. She needed to say, “Excuse me, is there a pensione nearby?”

Nervously, she approached the house. She stepped beneath the doorway, grabbed the iron knocker and let it fall.

The door opened and a thin, elderly man, wearing brown wool pants, a matching vest, and an ivory linen shirt with a knotted silk cravat, peered out into the rain.

“Buona sera,” Jenny began. Haltingly, she recited what she remembered. “Mi scusi. Puo dirmi qual’e la via per una pensione?”

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“No pensione.”

Thunder began to roll through the night skies, and the rain thickened into a nearly solid wall of water.

“Piove. Vai alla Casa dei Gatti,” the old man said briskly.

Piove, she recognized. He was telling her it was raining. The rest she couldn’t quite make out.

“Vai,” he repeated. “La Casa dei Gatti. Sbrigati!”

The last word meant hurry up. Their landlady in Rome was always urging Carl to propose to Jenny. “Sbrigati!” she’d tell him, as if Carl were capable of hurrying.

Jenny stared longingly into the room beyond the doorway, a high-ceilinged kitchen with brick walls, a long, rough wooden table, and a fire roaring in the hearth. It looked so warm and inviting that she couldn’t quite believe it when the old man gave a crisp Buona sera and shut the door in her face.

“And a lovely night to you, too,” Jenny muttered.

Beyond the house the road snaked downhill, rain coursing down the asphalt as if it were a riverbed. Jenny followed it, hoping for another house, or whatever it was that the old man had waved her on to. She was walking into her new life, she realized, a life without Carl. She tried to think of that as freeing, an invitation to adventure. Instead she thought of Sasha, who saw omens in everything. Jenny had a good idea of what Sasha would say about a new life that began with being lost in a storm and having a door slammed in your face. “It’s very clear, Jenny,” she’d say through a haze of cigarette smoke. “The omens are not auspicious.”

What they were, Jenny decided, was perverse. She walked for what seemed at least another mile before she saw a glimmer of light. She soon found herself standing on a stone bridge that spanned a narrow, churning stream. In the very center of the bridge, in a glass case, was a shrine to the Virgin, complete with a rosary, fresh flowers, and a candle flickering in a tall, red glass. Her light in the dark.

Great, she thought. I walk for miles in a fucking downpour and I find a shrine!

Jenny glared at the statue, envying it for being dry, composed, and oblivious to the whole lousy night. She, on the other hand, was cold, soaked, exhausted, and vibrating with pain. There was no particular part of her body that hurt. It was all of her, stunned and aching and feeling like the stupidest creature on earth. She’d been such a fool. She couldn’t imagine that she would ever stop hating herself for that.

She continued across the bridge to a dirt road beaten by the rain into a thick bed of mud. She kept walking, aware that she was traveling deeper into the countryside, farther and farther from the possibility that Carl would ever find her.

She slogged up a long, muddy hill. The landscape flared dead-white beneath a sheet of lightning; and in its moment of illumination Jenny realized she was standing in front of another house. A house without a door. Just an ancient wooden post and lintel set into stone walls. The light of her flashlight revealed a dark, cavernous interior. The house was abandoned.

Jenny stepped over the worn granite step beneath the lintel, and felt herself quivering with relief. It was damp and cold inside the ruin of the house, but it was shelter.

Something brushed against her leg. She lowered her light and nearly screamed at the sight of glowing green eyes staring back at her. A cat, she realized, and her pounding heart slowed. It was just a cat, a small, scrawny tortoiseshell with a black mask and a funny orange streak down its nose. The cat was obviously here for the same reason that she was. Jenny knelt down and held out a wet hand for it to sniff.

“Hey, cat,” she said softly. “Think I could share this place with you tonight?” She felt the cat’s cold nose touch her hand, and took it for assent.

Like everything else in Jenny’s life, the batteries in her flashlight were dying. Its dim light made the house a series of shadows. All she could really tell was that the cat had had its way with the place. Fish bones, narrow little rat heads, and shredded yellowed newspapers littered the stone floor. Carl would be right at home here, Jenny thought wryly.

She passed from the large hall she’d first entered to an even larger room. Through a low, narrow doorway she found the kitchen, which she identified by a deep, tublike sink, and an arched opening in the brick wall to the side of the hearth: the oven. There was even a half-collapsed wooden hutch, and in front of it, a shiny, wet mound of pink entrails.

She whirled as she heard a mewing sound at her feet. The tortoiseshell cat gazed up at her expectantly.

“What do you want, you little murderer?” Jenny asked.

The cat rubbed against her ankles, purring.

Jenny sighed and knelt down to run her fingers through the cat’s soft fur. “So where do you sleep?” she asked. “Is there anyplace in here that’s comfortable?”

As if in reply, the cat walked out of the kitchen and up a short, curving flight of stone stairs. Amused, Jenny followed. The cat paused at an open doorway, and it occurred to Jenny that there were no doors anywhere in this house.

Her light followed the cat into the room. At first she thought she was looking at a king-sized feather bed covered with a fur comforter, a rich patchwork of gray, tan, black, white, and orange. A soft, warm bed, Jenny thought, nearly delirious at the idea. And then one particular black and white patch of fur raised its head and stared at her with burning gold eyes, and she realized that the entire bed was covered with cats. There had to be at least sixty of them, curled and stretched, neatly fitted to each other, their bodies gently rising and falling on a somnolent current of breath. Only the one cat looked at her, and its gaze was so piercing that she remembered an elderly woman she’d once met who refused to be photographed for fear that the photographic image would steal her soul. That’s how the cat’s gaze made her feel, as though it were fixing her image and her battered soul lay exposed in its golden eyes, there for the taking.

The black and white cat sprang from the bed and sat down directly in front of Jenny. Jenny took a quick step back, alarmed by its size. The top of its head came to the middle of her thigh. It gazed at her intently as if weighing odds, considering factors, coming to a decision. Then it started out of the room. It turned once with an impatient mmmrahh! sound, which Jenny took to mean that she should follow.

The black and white led her to another doorless room. This one was much smaller, the size of a monk’s cell and almost as sparely furnished. A narrow pallet-bed stood against one wall, a small wooden chest at its foot; a single clothes peg jutted out of the opposite wall. Jenny blinked in disbelief. The bed was neatly made with crisp white cotton sheets and two pillows in embroidered pillowcases, lying side by side.

Curious, Jenny opened the chest. Her flashlight died as she lifted the lid, but inside she felt a thick wool blanket. She hesitated only a moment before spreading the blanket on the bed, then quickly stripping off her wet clothing and slipping between the sheets.

Her body went rigid with shock. The sheets were cold, so unbelievably cold. Cotton spun from ice. She curled into a tight ball, telling herself that the bed would soon be warm. But she knew it for a lie, and that made the grief inside her all the worse. If Carl were here, she wouldn’t be cold. Carl would curl up around her and hold her safe and snug in his arms. Carl made her world warm. For the briefest second Jenny let herself imagine the feel of his chest pressed against her back, his thighs cupping hers, one arm beneath her, the other falling heavy across her ribs, his breath, warm and even on the back of her neck. …

“You are not allowed to do that anymore,” she told herself sternly. But it had been nearly two years since she’d gone to bed alone, and her body was shaking as if it’d never stop. She missed him. Oh God, how she missed him.

Quite suddenly, she became aware of the black and white cat. He was sitting on the pillow next to hers. He hadn’t been there when she’d gotten under the covers. She hadn’t noticed him jumping onto the bed. But now he was curled up beside her, regarding her with that golden, imperious gaze. It made her nervous to have him so close. She’d never lived with a cat, but she’d heard that they sometimes suffocated people, sucked the breath out of them as they slept.

Very slowly the cat reached out one long paw and set it on her shoulder. The gesture was oddly protective. She lay very still, listening to the rain, wondering what the cat would do next. It did nothing but keep its paw on her shoulder until the chill left the bed and her shivering stopped.

She drifted into sleep soon after, the old man’s voice playing in her mind. “Vai a la Casa dei Gatti,” he told her. And this time she understood.

Jenny woke from a dreamless sleep to the black and white cat tapping her insistently on the nose. “Carl?” she said aloud before she could stop herself. She caught her breath, aching. Carl wasn’t there. “Carl.” She said it again, this time deliberately. She had to feel it, test it, in the same way that as a child she had to push against a loose tooth.

The cat, who didn’t seem to approve of this experiment in pain, turned his back on her and sprang to a ledge above her head. Although the room was still dark, Jenny could make out cracks of light around the edges of wooden shutters. Wrapping herself in the wool blanket, she got up, felt for the shutters’ iron latch, and opened it.

There was no glass in the windows; she opened the shutters directly into the countryside and its weather. The wind had shifted and was no longer blowing rain against the house, but the rain was still pouring down, a thick, transparent curtain of water. Jenny peered out, trying to get her bearings. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was. The sky was a dense wash of gray. On a hilltop she saw what looked like a great wooden barn, and in the distance, across a spread of open fields dotted with olive trees, a few houses, all of them built of fieldstone. Jenny felt the hopelessness of the previous night start to fade. When the rain let up, she’d find out where she was and how to get the nearest bus or train into Florence. Even without Carl, it would be all right.

She glanced at the cat beside her. He was quite handsome by daylight and most definitely a he, with a broad chest and a tom’s large head. He was a tuxedo, his coat a deep, glossy black; his chest and paws and a bit of his muzzle white. In the gray light of the day his eyes had gone green. Jenny reached out to pet him, but the cat’s level gaze stopped her. Something inside him was different than what she’d sensed in other cats. She thought of the strays in the Colosseum, wild little beggars as much a part of the city as the Roman ruins. This one was not quite so wild, nor could she conceive of him being anyone’s pet.

With the cat’s eyes boring into her, Jenny crossed the small room and poked at her clothing hanging from the peg. Her jeans were damp and cold and stiff with mud; her shirt not much better. But she put them on anyway, feeling absurdly self-conscious changing in front of the cat. It was because he had no self-consciousness, she realized. The cat sat there perfectly composed, assured of his own beauty and grace, of his rightness in the world. And with every second Jenny felt more awkward, knowing that she didn’t belong in the house and she certainly didn’t belong with Carl anymore. She hadn’t the faintest idea of just where it was she did belong, and the thought left her reeling.

The cat watched as she made the bed, folding up the blanket and returning it to the trunk. Then with another one of his sounds that was not quite a meow, he led the way downstairs. She noticed as she passed the master bedroom that the huge feather bed was now empty of cats, except for one large tiger stripe who apparently liked to sleep late.

By daylight the downstairs was even worse than it had been in shadow, and now the reason for the mess was clear. The cats were everywhere. They were grooming themselves, sharpening their claws on the ratty sofa, leaping to and from the window ledges, running mad steeplechases up and down the stairs. Cotton batting floated from the sofa, cobwebs clung to the corners, and thick gray puffs of cat fur drifted across the floors. And everywhere there were bones, feathers, pieces of dead rodents. Jenny nearly gagged when she set her hand down on the wide stone banister and it closed on a pigeon’s spindly pink leg.

Fortunately, the kitchen was somewhat equipped. A wooden bucket and scrub brush, a broom, and a thick bar of lemon-scented soap were tucked away beneath the sink. The side of the hearth was stacked with firewood and kindling. In a drawer in the cabinet Jenny even found candles and matches. After some resistance from the damp kindling, she managed to get a fire going and spent a few delicious minutes standing in front of the flames, enjoying their warmth. The house was still a revolting mess, though, so Jenny did what she always did when confronted by chaos. She cleaned.

She started by filling the bucket with runoff from the storm drain. She wet the scrub brush, rubbed it with the soap, and began to scour the kitchen floor. She cleaned for hours, scrubbing away layers of dirt and fur and decaying food. Soon, she promised herself, the house wouldn’t smell as though a school of fish had swum in and died there. The cats watched as she worked, seemingly fascinated.

She had only one disconcerting moment. She’d stepped outside to fill the bucket with fresh rainwater, and she saw a tall, slender woman, dressed in a long wool cloak, hurrying across the fields.

“Un momento!” Jenny called over the downpour. “Per favore!”

The woman stopped and turned, and Jenny saw that within the dark hood, the woman’s hair shone like summer wheat and framed a cool, familiar, flawless beauty.

“Sasha?”

The woman turned and continued across the fields.

Jenny almost ran after her. Only the rain stopped her. The rain and the knowledge that it couldn’t have been Sasha. Sasha was in Florence, probably staying in the same room in the charming old pensione that Jenny had reserved for herself and Carl.

Jenny had cleaned fiercely after that, scrubbing with an energy that bordered on vengeance. And it had been worth it, she thought as she surveyed the house. With the floors cleaned, candles set in the niches in the walls, and the few pieces of furniture rearranged into a semblance of order, the ruin of a house had a rough beauty. The candlelight reflected the sheen of the worn floors, revealed the texture of the stucco walls, picked up the warmth of the wooden shutters and beams. A faint lemon scent mingled with the smell of wood burning in the hearth.

Satisfied with her day’s work, Jenny dragged the couch into the kitchen and collapsed in front of the fire. Apparently, the cats considered this an excellent idea. A delicate all black jumped up beside her, then two striped kittens, and a bony, old three-legged Siamese. The little tortoiseshell female wormed her way through the others and onto Jenny’s lap, arching her butt against Jenny’s chest and purring loudly. An even smaller cat, who seemed to be part Abyssinian, draped herself across Jenny’s shoulder and nestled her cold nose against Jenny’s neck.

It would all be very cozy, Jenny thought wearily, if she weren’t starving. It had been nearly a day and a half since she’d last eaten, and she was feeling headachy and a bit faint.

“I’m hungry,” she said aloud. At her words the big tiger cat, the one who liked to sleep late, stretched and got to his feet. With a bound he leapt to the kitchen window, and with another, disappeared into the rain. He returned minutes later, a bloodied black rat hanging from his mouth. He carried his kill proudly across the kitchen, dropped the rodent at Jenny’s feet, then lay there, panting beside the carcass, a triumphant grin on his face.

“Thank you,” Jenny said stiffly. She didn’t know what else to say, and it seemed rude to clean up this gift while the cat was looking so pleased with himself.

Just after darkness fell she took herself to bed. Once again the big black and white curled up beside her, one paw resting on her shoulder. And once again she fell into a dreamless sleep.

“Why is she here?”

Jenny woke to see the tuxedo cat sitting on top of the trunk, facing a ginger cat the size of a mountain lion.

“She’s suffering heartbreak,” the black and white answered.

At this, the ginger cat turned its great head toward Jenny, and seeing that she was awake, said to her, “You must understand, we cats generally don’t go in for that sort of thing.”

“And you humans give yourselves to it,” the black and white added, though not unkindly.

Jenny blinked, still half asleep and faint with hunger. Had she been fully awake, she might have argued. She had not so much given herself to heartbreak as she’d been taken over by it, broken into pieces, each of them aching for the whole that no longer existed. That perhaps never had.

“Are you all right?” the ginger cat asked with concern.

“You — You’re talking,” Jenny replied stupidly.

“Most animals with vocal cords do,” the black and white assured her.

“In English?”

The great ginger cat shrugged. “Language doesn’t matter. It is simply that in this place we choose to make ourselves understood.”

“This is Pappa Gatto,” the black and white explained. “He lives in the barn up the hill.”

The ginger cat inclined his head. “And you are?”

“Jenny. Jenny Myford.”

“You are welcome in our house, Jenny Myford,” Pappa Gatto said formally. “You have found favor with my children.”

As though choreographed, both cats swerved their heads at a sound that came from the ground floor.

“The gifts,” said the tuxedo cat. He turned back to Jenny. “Get dressed,” he told her. “You’ll want to see what’s arrived.”

The two cats left the room, leaving Jenny slightly dazed. She’d just held a conversation with two oversized cats. The day before, she’d seen Sasha crossing a field in the middle of a downpour. It occurred to Jenny that she was losing her mind. Still, she dressed herself and brushed out the thick tangle of her hair. It was a mercy, she reflected, that there were no mirrors in the house.

Downstairs, she found countless cats milling around two large wicker baskets. A delicate black kitten wedged her paw through the weave of the larger basket, earnestly attempting to lift the lid. Jenny knelt to help her and unpacked several smoked fish, a roasted chicken, and a thick bunch of catnip tied with twine.

“Where did all this come from?” Jenny asked.

The black and white, who seemed to have no interest in the food but sat gazing through an arched window, answered. “Many years ago we rid San Martino of a plague of rats. To this day, the people remember and thank us with their gifts.”

The little black cat on Jenny’s lap touched her arm with a paw and mewed plaintively. “What, you don’t speak English?” she asked it.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had a human live with us,” the ginger cat explained. “Many of my younger children are not experienced in talking to your kind.”

Whether or not the cats could converse in English, their desires were clear. They were rubbing against Jenny, tapping the basket with their paws, purring, meowing, doing everything but sending messages in Morse code.

“Okay,” she said. “Andiamo!” She got to her feet, the motion making her slightly dizzy, and went into the kitchen, where she took a stack of yellowed ceramic bowls from the cabinet. Using a dull knife, she divvied up the fish and chicken, then carefully portioned them out into the bowls. It was only as she set the first one down that she realized that each bowl had a name painted on it in an elaborate, cursive script.

“Aggripina,” she read aloud, and the elderly three-legged Siamese limped toward her. “Is that you?” she asked, stroking it as it began to eat. The cat purred in response, so Jenny tried a second. At the name Olivero, the tiger cat came forward, muscular shoulders rolling. Noccioula, brought the small Abyssinian; Sandro, a silvery tabby. Ruffino was a yellow torn who was missing one ear; Cipriana, a blue-gray longhair with a regal plume of a tail; Nicola, the delicate all-black; Giuseppe and Peppino, two comical striped kittens; and at the name Domenica, the wired little tortoise shell shot forward with a joyous burst of energy.

Jenny kept on naming and feeding cats until all of the bowls were in use, all of the cats contentedly feeding. All that is except Pappa Gatto and the black and white.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sure she’d gravely offended them. “I don’t have any more bowls left, and I’ve used up all the food.”

“That’s as it should be,” Pappa Gatto said gently. “We prefer to hunt. Don’t you think it’s time you ate? The second basket is for you, child.”

Jenny opened it and found a loaf of bread, still warm from the oven; a wedge of creamy white goat cheese; a bottle of Chianti; a hard summer sausage that smelled of fennel and herbs; grapes and olives and bright red tomatoes still clinging to a curl of vine. For a long, disbelieving moment she just stared at the feast in front of her.

“Eat,” Pappa Gatto said.

“Before you faint on us,” the black and white added.

She started with the grapes, progressed to the bread and cheese, then to the meat and wine. When she’d had her fill, she looked questioningly at the two large cats. “Who brought all that food? Who knows that I’m here?”

The black and white, who was again gazing out into the rain, said, “San Martino is a very small village, and our house has no doors. Did you think your presence was a secret? Everyone here knows everything.”

“Then someone must know how I can get to Florence,” Jenny said.

“Firenze is very far,” the ginger cat told her solemnly.

“Well, how long will it take me to get there? I’ve got to catch a plane back to the States.”

It soon became clear that the cats had no real understanding of either “plane” or “the States.” They’d seen and heard planes overhead but had never really connected them to people, and Jenny spent quite a while trying to explain both airplanes and nonrefundable tickets. (Pappa Gatto would later explain to the people of San Martino, “Jenny had to go to Firenze to catch her bird.”)

The cats patiently heard her out, then Pappa Gatto said, “From time to time we had young people live here and keep house for us. As you saw yesterday, it has been a while since the last. Won’t you stay? My children are already very fond of you. Little Domenica has talked of nothing else since you arrived.”

“You want me to stay and keep house for you?”

Pappa Gatto nodded. “San Martino is not such a bad place. You will see when the rain lets up.”

Aggripina, the three-legged Siamese, rubbed against Jenny’s legs, and Nicola curled up in her lap, a small oval of glossy black fur, her head cradled in Jenny’s palm.

Jenny ran a finger along the soft fuzz on Nicola’s nose. “You’re awfully sweet,” she said. “And I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t stay.”

The old Siamese’s blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t be a fool. If you go to Firenze now, you will only long for the worthless one who hurt you.”

The wine was acting on Jenny like truth serum. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to long for him for anyway.”

“That,” the black and white said, “is a waste of your time. But if you insist, you should know that you’re safer here. Grief alters humans. It lays them open, makes them vulnerable.”

Jenny wondered if she’d somehow fallen into the middle of a feline talk show. “Excuse me,” she said, “but what makes you think you’re all such experts on—”

“We’ve observed your kind for a very long time,” the black and white answered.

Nicola woke for a second to lick Jenny’s palm, then nestled her head inside it again.

Pappa Gatto yawned, revealing very large, very sharp, pointed teeth, and making Jenny wonder just what it was he hunted. “Wait a bit,” he suggested. “You will leave here and go to Firenze when the time is appropriate. You don’t have to worry about this journey of yours.” Then he earnestly began to wash his leg, thus putting an end to the discussion.

So Jenny stayed in the house of the cats. Even years later, when the strange, dreamlike quality of the time had faded, she would never be clear on just how long it was that she stayed. The rains stopped but the skies remained gray and overcast, and so mornings were indistinguishable from afternoons, and afternoons from dusk, and the days ran into each other like watercolors.

On the day that the cats decided that Jenny should stay, she ventured into the village for the first time. San Martino was tiny — maybe two dozen stone houses, most of them scattered across the fields. Its one street ended with a tabacchi bar opening onto a small, square piazza. The tabacchi bar, which sold groceries, cigarettes, and cappuccino, belonged to Marieangela, a stout gray-haired woman with a penchant for matching sweater sets and coral jewelry. Very little happened in San Martino without Marieangela’s approval; fortunately, Marieangela approved of Jenny. Speaking no English, she made it understood that Jenny was welcome to cappuccino in the mornings, Chianti in the evenings, and as much food and chocolate as she needed because Jenny was la ragazza che abita con i gatti. Marieangela was the first to use the phrase, but Jenny soon realized it was a title of sorts: the Girl Who Lives with the Cats.

Her title was a self-evident fact. Jenny couldn’t go anywhere without a stream of cats trailing after her. They followed her through the village and across the fields. They led her to San Martino’s well, to the vegetable garden and grapevines, and to the wide grassy yard that was home to an assortment of ducks, rabbits, and chickens. They crossed the bridge with her and chased each other while she studied the old tombstones in the tiny village cemetery. They sat with her when she drank her morning cappuccino and gave her what they considered to be the choicest bits of local gossip.

From the cats Jenny learned that the dapper gent who’d sent her on to their home was named Alfredo, and it was he who grew San Martino’s catnip. That Marieangela had seven grandchildren living in Ravenna, all of whom showed a great talent for playing with string. That Ermelina, the woman who kept the keys to the church, smelled like a delicious fish. That the rooster had a foul temper, but it was the old mallard who dominated the farmyard. That Livio’s sheep were always going missing because he didn’t have a sheepdog, and (the cats admitted regretfully) they really were to blame for this. It had been years since a dog had been fool enough to cross the bridge into the village. Pappa Gatto, they explained, didn’t care much for dogs.

If the cats gave Jenny the word on the villagers, they most assuredly gave the villagers the word on her. Though Jenny had never mentioned him, everyone in San Martino knew about Carl. “Suo ragazzo, peccato!” Ermelina told her within seconds of meeting her. Jenny had to ask the black and white to translate, and then found herself blushing as he said matter-of-factly, “Your boyfriend, what a shame!” And on the morning that Jenny found herself staring morosely into her cappuccino, Marieangela said briskly, “Un perso, centi trovati.” This, the black and white explained, was an Italian proverb that meant: “One loss, one hundred gains.” It was perfectly true, Jenny reflected. She’d lost one boyfriend and gained a hundred cats.

It happened for the second time on the day that Jenny sat in the old Byzantine church. Ermelina had insisted that sitting in the church would heal her cuore straziato, which after much gesturing Jenny understood to mean “broken heart.” So she sat, watching the dust motes filter down from the clerestory because she couldn’t bear to look at the agonized Christ on the cross that dominated the altar. It was while studying dust motes, and presumably healing her heart, that Jenny became aware of movement at the corner of her eye. Movement and the knowledge that something was wrong. There couldn’t be anyone else in the church. She and a ragtag assortment of kittens were the only ones Ermelina had let inside, and she hadn’t heard the heavy wooden door open since. But now she turned and saw that a nun cloaked in a black habit was moving silently up the aisle.

“Buon giorno,” Jenny said.

The nun turned, arms tucked into her sleeves, and bowed her head toward Jenny, her rosary brushing the wooden pew. She straightened, and Jenny saw that the severe black habit framed Sasha’s pale face, her beauty as tranquil and pious as if she’d actually become a Bride of Christ.

Jenny would have run screaming, but at that moment Pappa Gatto sprang from the rafters. Her voice paralyzed with shock, Jenny pointed toward the aisle.

Sasha was gone, the aisle of the church empty.

Jenny grasped the pew in front of her, needing to touch something solid. “D-Did you see her?” she stammered.

In the dark church Pappa Gatto’s eyes glowed like molten gold. “I see only you, Jenny,” he answered. “And you look frightened. Where are those little mischief-makers of mine who are supposed to keep you company?” He made a guttural sound, and the kittens tumbled out from behind the altar and came to sit before Pappa Gatto, looking unusually subdued.

“Did I imagine her?” Jenny asked. “I mean, Sasha. She’s—”

“You’ve been sitting in this gloomy church too long,” Pappa Gatto cut her off gently. “What was Ermelina thinking? Go outside, child. I promise you will feel better.”

The human inhabitants of San Martino were a curiously homogeneous group. From what Jenny could tell, they were all well over sixty, and all seemed to have lived their entire lives in the village. The men liked to sit in the tabacchi bar and smoke and play cards. The women gathered in the piazza, exchanging what Jenny guessed was local gossip. None of them spoke English, but most made a good-natured effort to understand her attempts at Italian. No one in San Martino, it seemed, had either a phone or a car. The closest thing to transport was Livio’s geriatric donkey. And no one had any advice for getting to Florence, other than, E lontano. Firenze de molte lontano. It is far. Firenze is very far.

As one day ran into the next Jenny became accustomed to talking cats; to villagers who supplied her with food, drink, and firewood but no help in leaving; to a life completely cut off from the one she’d always known. Her closest companions were the cats. They were not, she learned, herd or pack animals, and yet each was always conscious of the others. They played together, groomed each other, and slept together, most of them having relocated to Jenny’s bed. Though they reserved speech for communicating with her (except for the occasional challenge, they rarely spoke to their own kind), each cat always seemed to know exactly what the others thought and intended.

What Jenny found unnerving was that they read her as clearly as they read each other. This was particularly awkward when it came to the one subject she couldn’t stop thinking about: Carl. A stubborn, delusion-loving part of her psyche refused to believe that it was really over. She told herself that Carl’s falling for Sasha had been a mistake, a temporary obsession, that he’d since come to his senses and was searching the countryside for her. In her more rational moments Jenny knew that these thoughts were counterproductive, not to mention unbearably stupid; still, she held endless imaginary conversations in which she told Carl what a jerk he’d been, in which he confessed his abiding and eternal love for her, in which he got down on his knees and begged for her forgiveness — and for her hand in marriage. This, in fact, had become Jenny’s favorite fantasy, a scene she mentally enacted over and over again.

Carl, I’m sorry but I need time to think about it, she silently rehearsed one day while untangling a ball of yarn that Marieangela had given her for the kittens. I just don’t know if I can trust you anymore, but I’ve always loved you and—

“And you really want to live with that slob?” Aggripina, the three-legged Siamese, set an emphatic paw on Jenny’s knee. “He used you. He didn’t treat you with respect. Surely, you want better for yourself?”

Jenny sighed. Aggripina considered herself a fount of advice for the lovelorn. Sharing a house with her was like living with Ann Landers.

“I love Carl,” Jenny said firmly.

“Save your love for those who are capable of returning it,” the Siamese retorted.

“Carl loved me in his way.”

“If you can call something that makes you feel ugly and undesirable love.”

“That’s not just Carl,” Jenny said. “It’s fashion magazines and television and movies and rock videos. It’s all around us. You can’t get away from it.”

“You’re away from it here.”

“I’m hiding.”

“You’re healing,” the Siamese corrected her. “You need to see yourself as we see you.”

Jenny snorted. “As one who cleans up carrion?”

Ruffino gazed up at her adoringly. “You are quite neat,” he said. “You’re also kind and resourceful and you have the gift of making a home welcoming.”

“Definitely a Boy Scout,” Jenny muttered. “You left out loyal and obedient.”

“You are gentle and respectful with creatures smaller than yourself,” the Siamese added. “And though you’re hurting, you act with honesty, humor, and resilience. All these things we find beautiful, Jenny Myford.”

Jenny smiled reluctantly. “I find you pretty beautiful, too.” It was true. The elderly, amputee Siamese would never win a prize at a cat show, but Jenny had thought her lovely from the start.

Aggripina purred and rubbed against her. “Naturalamente. Was there ever any question?”

Jenny let it drop. It was sweet that the cats saw her in all her absurd weaknesses and loved her anyway, but their love couldn’t replace what she’d lost. She fell asleep each night surrounded by warm, purring bodies, and yet woke each morning sure that she was in Carl’s arms and grief-stricken when she realized that she wasn’t. And never would be again.

Each morning, Jenny began her day by gathering wildflowers along the banks of the stream. She’d make her way back to the village, stopping on the bridge to add flowers to those at the shrine. To her surprise, she’d become fond of the statue with the downcast eyes and gentle smile. Never quite sure if it was supposed to be the Madonna herself or one of the innumerable female saints, Jenny began to think of it as the Lady. She’d realized the first time she saw it in daylight that the statue was quite old and badly damaged. The Lady stood with her right hand palm up, in the traditional gesture of blessing. But her left hand, which should have lain flat against her blue robes, was missing, as was the entire lower left of the statue. It was as if someone had bitten a chunk out of it, leaving rough, yellowed plaster where there should have been robes as blue as the heavens. Jenny couldn’t help it, she felt a kinship with the broken statue, and so it seemed the least she could do was open the glass case and add a few stems of flowers to the vase.

It was at the shrine that Sasha appeared again. One day as Jenny opened the glass case, she heard something more than the murmuring of the stream behind her. She turned to see Sasha emerging from the stream, naked as a wood nymph, water streaming from her bright hair. With a model’s confident grace, Sasha pivoted on the grassy bank and faced Jenny straight on. For a long moment she stood absolutely still, letting Jenny have a good look at the high round breasts, the narrow waist and flat stomach, the long, ivory thighs and calf muscles so clearly defined they seemed faceted. She wore only the duke’s gold pendant.

Sasha’s lips didn’t move, but Jenny could swear she heard the throaty, taunting voice: “You see, Jenny, this is what beauty looks like.”

Jenny felt herself begin to shake. She didn’t know if the Sasha who stood in front of her was real, but she hated her. Hated her for being so beautiful. Hated her for walking into her life and taking Carl. Hated Carl for being dumb enough to fall for her. Hated herself for looking at Sasha’s perfect body and feeling humiliated by her own. Jenny sent the Lady a guilty glance; she’d never actually hated before.

Sasha took a step closer to the bridge, pale pink toes on bright green grass.

“Y-You shouldn’t be here,” Jenny stammered, surprised to hear herself speak.

Sasha wasn’t looking at Jenny now. She was smiling at the Lady, and Jenny had the oddest sensation that it was the statue, not herself, whom Sasha had come for. Quickly, Jenny turned and closed the glass case, then turned to confront the apparition.

Whether she was real or imaginary, Jenny had to ask: “What do you want? You’ve already got Carl.”

Again, Sasha’s mouth didn’t move, but Jenny heard her voice clearly. “You and I are alike, Jenny.”

“No,” Jenny said. “We are nothing—”

Sasha held up the gold pendant edged with pearls. “L’amour dure sans fin. You will always love him, won’t you, Jenny-o? For eternity.”

The use of Carl’s name for her made Jenny see a haze of bright red. Not even knowing what she was doing, she stooped down, grabbed a fist-sized rock, drew her arm back — and stopped as Leandro, a young charcoal-gray tom, bounded past her, across the bridge, racing toward the apparition.

Sasha stepped back into the waters of the stream. “A piu tardi,” she promised. See you later.

The charcoal torn came to an abrupt halt and started to shake. Sasha was gone, as if she’d never been.

Jenny knelt beside the cat and ran her hand along his quivering side. A cold bead of fear slid through her. “We’re both seeing things,” she murmured. “I’ve become seriously unhinged from my own life, and now it’s even affecting you.” She looked up at the statue in the glass case. “I have to get back to the States, to my own life,” she told the Lady. “Where I won’t see visions of Sasha.”

Jenny returned to the house shaken but resolved. She’d leave San Martino tomorrow. That would give her the day to say good-bye to the cats and wash her clothes before setting off. Marieangela, taking pity on Jenny’s one outfit, had lent a few of her own dresses to wear. Although they were all several sizes too big, Jenny had found them comfortable and somehow comforting. But now that she was leaving, it seemed essential that she go in her own clothes. So that afternoon, accompanied by Olivero and the tuxedo cat, she took her clothes and the bar of lemon soap down to the edge of the stream.

The afternoon light was odd, overcast yet glaring, and the branches of the trees that edged the water kept going slightly out of focus.

Jenny set to rubbing her jeans with the soap and swirling them in the icy water. Beside her, the black and white began washing Olivero’s ears.

She’d just wrung out her jeans and laid them on the bank to dry when she heard a low, dangerous rumbling sound that seemed to rise out of the earth. It wasn’t a tremor, she realized. The two cats were no longer contentedly grooming themselves. They were on their feet, ears flat, backs arched high, fur bristling; the sound she heard was their growling.

She followed their gaze across the stream to the source of the threat. In the cemetery a tall, slender woman, her pale hair braided and circling her head like a crown, moved among the plots, lightly touching each gravestone. She wore a long midnight-blue velvet gown. The neckline was cut straight across the breast bone, the bodice fitted close, the waist belted with a chain of sapphires. A round golden pendant edged with pearls hung from her neck.

“Hsssssstrega,” the black and white hissed.

Sasha turned slowly, answering him with the cool, challenging smile that Jenny had once mistaken for self-possession. When it was, in fact, a dare. The smile dared every man to fuck her, every woman to be as beautiful. Now Jenny could almost hear Sasha’s voice daring them to stop her: You’ll never touch me. I will always be beyond your reach.

The tiger cat’s growl deepened and then rose to a bloodcurdling battle cry.

Jenny watched in astonishment as the stream bank began to fill with cats. They raced across the fields. They leapt from the branches of the trees that arched the stream. They swarmed across the bridge. They came from every area of the village, until they formed a circle around Jenny, each cat arched, hissing, ready to defend her with its life. Jenny felt her own chest go tight with terror. She shouldn’t have waited; she should have left San Martino that morning. Please, she sent up a silent prayer to the Lady, don’t let any of them be hurt for me. Keep them safe.

On the other side of the stream Sasha shook her head, smiling. “Very impressive, Jenny-o,” she said.

“What do you want?” Jenny asked.

“What you’re going to give me. You’ll see. You and your precious cats will give me what was mine before and what must be mine again, what was always meant for me.”

Sasha flashed a model’s practiced smile. Then slowly, the midnight-blue velvet of her dress faded to a dusty navy, the navy to a slate blue, and the slate blue to a murky gray, until there was only a hint of color on the air, like smoke lingering after a fire.

Jenny felt her breath return to normal as the cats began to relax and disperse. Finally, only Olivero and the black and white remained on the bank with her.

“Fantasma,” Olivero said, spitting out the word like a curse. It would be the only time Jenny would hear him use human speech.

“You’ve seen her before,” Jenny said.

“Do you think it’s for our health that we always follow you?” the black and white snapped. “I told you that you were in danger.” Beside him the tiger cat was still arched, his fur nearly electric. The tuxedo cat regarded him fondly. “Olivero doesn’t trust anything he can’t kill.”

“What is she?” Jenny asked.

“A fantasma, a wraith. Or strega, a witch. Choose what term you will. She belongs to another place.”

“Minneapolis, if you really want to know,” Jenny said.

“This is not a question of geography,” the cat told her. “You must understand that although the strega can enter your world, it is not her true home. Now tell me, how many times have you seen her here?”

“Three before this time. Once in the fields, once in the church, this morning in the stream, and now with you.”

The two cats exchanged a glance, and the black and white muttered something about audace.

“And she was always dressed as she was now?”

“When I saw her in the fields, she wore a cloak. She was naked in the stream, and in the church she was dressed like a nun.”

“She was a nun,” the cat said thoughtfully. “As she was once the young noblewoman you just saw. In other times, you understand.”

Jenny took that in, her legs suddenly trembling. “What she said about me — and you — giving her what was hers … is that true?”

The tuxedo’s green gaze held her steady. “Perhaps. It is only here, where she spent so many lifetimes, that she has true power.”

“For what? What is it that she wants?”

“Whomever she can get,” the black and white answered. “But we will not let her have you.”

The next morning Jenny woke chilled. For once her bed was not blanketed with cats. There was only the black and white sitting on the pillow beside her, and at the foot of the bed, Pappa Gatto. Jenny rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It felt like her second morning in the house, so much so that she had a feeling that one cycle had ended and another begun.

Pappa Gatto soon confirmed this. “Good morning, Jenny,” he began in his usual genteel manner. “I hope you slept well, for today is very important. Today you leave for Firenze. Please get dressed then come downstairs.”

The two cats left the room, leaving Jenny as dazed as she’d been after their first conversation. She’d planned to leave San Martino today, and yet Pappa Gatto declaring it with the authority of a papal edict somehow made it real. Today she was going to leave la casa dei gatti, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d say goodbye to so many creatures whom she’d come to love.

She put on her own underwear and socks, her jeans, her lavender T-shirt, and her running shoes. After weeks in Marieangela’s oversized dresses, the tight denim jeans seemed confining. It felt strange to put on her old clothes, as if she were stepping back into a life that no longer fit her.

Pappa Gatto sat waiting at the foot of the stairs, indulging two kittens who stalked his tail. “Jenny, there is something we must show you.”

The great ginger cat led the way to a low, locked wooden door at the back of the kitchen. Jenny had tried the lock before, assuming the door led to some sort of larder. Unable to open it, she’d forgotten about it.

Pappa Gatto touched a loose brick in the hearth. “Behind that stone you will find a key to the door. Please take the key and open the door for us.”

Jenny moved the brick, found a rust-covered skeleton key, and slid it into the lock. The lock clicked open with a turn. She pushed open the wooden door and saw a stairway going down.

“This way,” Pappa Gatto said, starting down the stairs.

Jenny followed slowly, feeling her way along the stone wall with her hands. The air became damp and cool as she descended, and the stairs went slick with something that might have been moss. She stumbled once, then felt warm, soft fur beneath her hand. “Rest your hand on my back,” Pappa Gatto said. “I will lead you.”

Holding loosely to the cat, Jenny made her way to the bottom of the stairs and through an even darker hall. All the while she could sense the other cats, filing down the stairway, filling the hall behind her.

She let go of Pappa Gatto as the hall suddenly opened into a high-ceilinged chamber. Someone had been here recently, Jenny realized. Someone who’d taken the trouble to light the oil lamps on the walls.

Jenny stood perfectly still, unable to believe her eyes. The walls of the chamber were covered by a trompe l’oeil fresco, a vision both strange and familiar. The colors were the rich jewel tones of the Florentine masters — the impossibly soft reds of Botticelli; the celestial mother-of-pearl pink and silver-green of Fra Angelico; the cerulean blue of Lippi and the lapis of Bronzino; the range of earth browns that had only come through da Vinci — and all of them detailed and shimmering with gold leaf. The scene, a Renaissance villa with soaring marble columns and an airy loggia that opened out onto the garden. A spring day. Purple wisteria climbing the walls. Red poppies and white irises growing wild among the grasses.

Above the loggia, a balcony opened out from the villa’s upper story, and Jenny saw that each of the stone ledges was covered with cats. Cats whom she knew quite well. Olivero was there and so were Cipriana and Nicola, Aggripina looking ready to dispense advice, a yellow torn with a missing ear, the striped kittens, even Domenica with her funny tortoiseshell mask. In the very center of the garden was someone else Jenny recognized, the Lady of the shrine. Nearly identical to the statue, she wore lapis blue robes and had one hand upraised in blessing. But it was clear now why she was smiling and looking down. The hand that was missing from the statue rested comfortably on the head of an extraordinarily large ginger cat. And lying stretched out in front of them, guardian and mediator, was a tuxedo cat with an imperious green gaze.

The sides of the fresco were devoted to the Tuscan hills that surrounded the villa. And in these, too, Jenny recognized friends: a shepherd, who looked very much like Livio; a robust elderly woman, the image of Ermelina, carrying a flat woven tray filled with fish; a man who looked like a younger Alfredo, trying to charm a well-dressed young lady with Marieangela’s smile and coral necklace.

Jenny stood stunned, half understanding and yet unable to grasp the whole. “Th-The house, upstairs,” she finally stammered. “Did it once look like this villa?”

“It was the villa,” Pappa Gatto replied. “All you see in the fresco was. And is, more or less. San Martino was here then and is here now and shall remain for years to come.”

“And who is she?”

“The Lady? She’s had many names, but here she is most often called the Madonna. She, too, has been watching out for you. It is no accident that the fantasma could not touch you.”

The black and white lashed his tail impatiently. “We brought you here to give you a token of our appreciation. There are two caskets on the table before you. You must choose now which you will take.”

Jenny had been so fascinated by the fresco that she’d barely noticed the green marble table in the center of the room.

“Open them and look inside,” Pappa Gatto said.

Lifting the wooden lid of the first, Jenny nearly had to shield her eyes from its glittering contents. The casket was filled with jewels. Ruby necklaces, bracelets of beaten gold, heavy sapphire rings, a white-gold tiara set with pale blue topaz, a bracelet made of emerald-cut diamonds that even in the lamplight threw rainbows against the walls.

“They’re all real,” Cipriana assured her.

The jewels should have thrilled her. They were beautiful, extraordinary, clearly worth a fortune. But they made her uneasy; they reminded her of Sasha.

“Look in the other casket!” Domenica said eagerly. “That’s my favorite!”

“Domenica, hush!” Pappa Gatto growled.

Jenny opened the second casket, wondering what could possibly compete with the contents of the first. Inside she found a small, rectangular book bound in ink-stained brown leather, its binding roughly stitched by hand. It was a sketch book, Jenny realized, one that could have belonged to the artist who’d painted the fresco. The line and style were the same, and so were the subjects. There were rough charcoal sketches of the gardens and the loggia. Ink details of the columns. Delicate watercolors of Marieangela and Ermelina. And exquisite detailed miniatures in tempera and gold leaf of the Lady and each of the cats.

“This is what I want,” Jenny said. “I couldn’t figure out how I was actually going to leave you, but if I could take this with me—”

“You have made your choice,” said Pappa Gatto. “Come, we will see you out of San Martino.”

The village was curiously empty when she left. Only the cats saw her off, trailing her across the fields, through the center of the town, over the bridge, past the cemetery and the grapevines and the field where Livio grazed his sheep.

“Firenze is in that direction,” Pappa Gatto said, gesturing uphill toward a black strip of asphalt. “Walk that way and you will surely find it. And one last thing, Jenny.”

“What?” Jenny was doing her best not to cry, but she couldn’t stop looking at the black and white cat, couldn’t help but realize how from that first night, he’d been looking out for her, how they all had.

“If you hear the cock crow, turn toward it; if on the contrary, the ass brays, you must look the other way,” Pappa Gatto instructed.

“I’ll remember,” Jenny promised.

She knelt and Domenica, Nicola, and the kittens all raced into her arms for a final hug. Olivero actually climbed onto her shoulder, purring, while Ruffino, Nocciuloa, Sandro, and Aggripina rubbed against her. Finally, she held out one hand to the black and white, wondering if he’d finally let her pet him. He walked toward her, as imperious as ever, and then to her everlasting astonishment, he licked her hand with a rough pink tongue. “Go with the gods, Jenny Myford,” he said.

Jenny busied her mind with practicalities as she started along the road: How far was Firenze? Had she already missed her flight? How would she buy food if she couldn’t find an open bank and cash her travelers’ checks? And if, by some miracle, she actually made the flight, would Carl be on it? Carl. No matter what, her thoughts inevitably circled back to Carl. She pictured the two of them as they’d left Boston earlier that summer, how excited they’d been at the airport, how she’d slept in his arms on the plane, how she’d never imagined that she’d return home without him. A donkey brayed loudly behind her, cutting through her thoughts. Deliberately, Jenny kept her eyes on the road ahead, not looking back.

She hadn’t gone much farther when a cock’s crow split the morning air. Jenny glanced toward the sound, hoping to see a farm or a house. Instead she saw a bright, red leather drawstring pouch on the side of the road. She opened it, knowing it was a gift from the cats, and took out thirty thousand lire, traveling money to get her to Florence.

There was something else in the pouch, a small round hand mirror, its silver surface edged with golden rays. Jenny peered into the miniature sun. She had the same frizzy brown hair she’d always had. Her face was still too full, her mouth too small, nose too large. She’d never come close to Sasha’s fine-boned perfection. And yet she’d changed. She could actually see the qualities the cats had ascribed to her: humor, resilience, honesty, kindness. There was even something in the set of her mouth that hinted at her penchant for order. Jenny stared at her reflection, amazed. For the first time, she actually liked what she saw. No, it went deeper than that. She found herself beautiful.

She slipped the mirror beneath the lire and closed the pouch as she heard the sound of footsteps. There was someone ahead on the road, beyond the next curve. She hurried forward, rounded the bend, then came to a sudden halt, paralyzed. Carl was walking toward her. Jenny’s stomach churned. She felt as sick as she had the night she’d left him.

Carl glanced up and went white with shock. “Jen?” He looked awful. He was unshaven, his hair greasy, and his face haggard. But he smiled when he saw her. “Jenny! Thank God! Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said, barely able to get out the one syllable. Seeing Carl hurt more than she’d have guessed. Some insanely dumb part of her still wanted to run into his arms. And the rest of her ached because she couldn’t.

He gestured behind him. “The battery just died,” he said sheepishly. “The VW’s about a mile back there. I’ve been looking for a phone.” He walked toward her, smiling, and Jenny found herself backing up. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t come any closer.”

He stopped, his eyes searching hers in confusion. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been driving every damn road in Tuscany searching for you.”

“You have?”

“Yes. I have.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I’ve been worried sick about you,” he replied. It didn’t change anything, but she believed him. “I never should have let you go that night. I should have gone after you the second you got out of the van. I’m sorry, Jen. Really sorry. About everything …”

Jenny had to ask, “How’s Sasha?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Sasha split our first morning in Florence. Told me she’d heard from a modeling friend in Tuscany who was sick. Said she was going to go stay with her for a couple of days to help her out.”

Jenny found the idea of Sasha playing nurse even weirder than the idea that she was once a nun. “And you actually bought that?”

Anger flickered in Carl’s eyes as he said, “All that crap about our karma being entwined and being together without end. I waited for her in Florence for a solid week. And then”—he threw his hands up in the air—“I knew I had to come looking for her.”

“So … it’s Sasha you’re searching for,” Jenny said.

A cold, clear wind swept through her, like the first taste of winter. It took with it all her longing for Carl, everything in her that still wanted to be loved by him.

“I’m looking for her and you,” Carl said quickly.

Jenny let that one go. “So what are you going to do about the VW?”

“Beats me. I was hoping I’d be able to find a garage, ’cause we’ve got to get back to Florence. Our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon, you know. I was not counting on the damn battery dying.” He gave her an embarrassed smile. “I’m down to my last ten thou, and a battery here probably costs ten times that much.”

“Well, that explains why you were looking for me,” Jenny said. She had a sudden vision of the inscription on Sasha’s necklace. Obviously, she wasn’t one of those who loved without end. She didn’t want Carl anymore, didn’t need him or even like him. But she’d loved him once, and because she had, she didn’t want any harm to come to him. She’d help him this one last time. She began doing mental calculations. She still had her travelers’ checks, so if she kept just part of the cash in the pouch …

“I have twenty thousand lire I can lend you, but you’ve got to pay it back when we’re in the States.”

“Jenny-o, you’re still my angel.”

“No. I’m not. I just can’t bear to leave you to die of your own stupidity. I’ve been telling you that battery was funky all summer.”

“What do you mean, leave me?”

“I’m going to Florence,” Jenny said. “But not with you.”

She opened the red leather pouch and counted out the thirty thousand lire. “Twenty for you, ten for me, and I’ll see you—” She stopped as she noticed that Carl was peering into the bottom of the pouch.

“You’ve got a lot more than thirty thousand there,” he said.

Jenny pulled the pouch away from him, and saw that he was right. There was another pile of notes, neatly folded. She took it out, forty thousand more, and blinked — more neatly folded bills lay in the bottom of the pouch.

“Jen.” Carl’s eyes were alight. “What is this? Magic money?”

“I–I don’t know,” Jenny stammered.

“Well, where’d you get the tricky little purse?”

“It was a gift,” said Pappa Gatto, his long form emerging from a stand of cypress trees on the side of the road.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Carl swore. “Is that really a cat?”

“This is Pappa Gatto,” Jenny said, unnerved by having her worlds so unexpectedly collide.

“Wild,” Carl murmured.

The big cat sat down, facing Carl. “Jenny was kind enough to stay with us and keep house for my children,” he explained. “The leather pouch is a small token of our gratitude.”

“I’m in a fuckin’ Disney film,” Carl muttered. “Magic money, giant talking cats—”

“The money in the pouch is for Jenny,” Pappa Gatto went on calmly. “But if you’d like to earn your own, I’m sure we could use your help.”

Carl? Keep house? Jenny wasn’t sure whether she’d choke or die laughing. “Pappa Gatto—”

“This is Carl’s choice,” the ginger cat said.

“Then Carl chooses yes!” Carl said happily. “Just show me the way!”

“What about the VW?” Jenny asked.

“Don’t worry, someone will tow it. We were going to have to sell it cheap in Florence anyway.” His eyes scanned her body with the kind of frank sexual appreciation he hadn’t shown since they first met. “I’ll see you on the plane. You’re looking good, Jen.”

“Listen, Carl, there’s something you ought to know. The village that Pappa Gatto lives in, San Martino, it’s — haunted.”

“As long as the ghosts have dinero—”

“By Sasha.” Jenny spoke quickly, urgently, determined to warn him. “If you see her, it’s not really her. It’s a ghost or a witch or I don’t know what exactly — some kind of apparition that’s dangerous.”

Carl’s look of lust turned to pity. “Jealous, Jenny-o?” he asked softly.

Jenny stared at him, unable to find words.

Carl didn’t even say goodbye. He was already following Pappa Gatto down the road to San Martino.

Once again Jenny set off for Florence. She had just over a day to get to the airport. Tuscany wasn’t that big; no matter where she was, she had plenty of time. And she was not going to worry about Carl. She did worry about the cats, though. She couldn’t image Carl washing their bowls, or shaking out the great feather bed, or gently loosening the mats in Ruffino’s fur.

After walking the better part of the morning Jenny came to a crossroads. Since she had no map, she decided to head toward the castle town of Poppi. It was the right decision. She’d barely left the crossroads when a woman driving a pickup truck offered her a lift to town. Twelve kilometers later Jenny found herself in Poppi’s old station house, staring at a bulletin board papered with train schedules. With a mild sense of amazement, she bought herself a ticket for Florence. She’d be in the city that night. The next day she’d be on the plane, and the day after, back home.

She sat down on a wooden bench to wait for her train. It wouldn’t leave until eight that evening. She had six hours to kill. She could go buy herself a sandwich, maybe walk through the castle if it was open. Or, she realized, she could return to San Martino and make sure that the cats were all right …

She did not catch a ride on the way back, and so she reached the road into San Martino just as dusk was falling. She felt a peculiar sense of relief as she saw that the village was still there; she hadn’t imagined it. She ran down the winding road, past the fields where Livio’s sheep grazed, past the path that led to the vineyard, past the cemetery.

Jenny slowed her pace as she saw Carl coming toward her. He’d just crossed the bridge and was walking with a jaunty roll to his step, a burlap bag slung over one shoulder. No cats, she noted, were trailing after him. No wood smoke rose from the houses. None of the animals were out in the farmyard. San Martino seemed deserted.

“Hey, Jenny-o,” Carl called out cheerfully. “I knew you’d be back.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked anxiously. “Are the cats—”

“Everything’s fine. No problemo. I can’t believe you found this place. It’s the gig of a lifetime.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I hung with the cats. Took a good long nap in that feather bed, and then had some of that sausage and fruit you left. And I rapped with ’em — cats say some pretty wild things. Then at the end of the day, the big one, the Pappa Cat, he comes in and thanks me for staying with them and says he wants to give me a token of their appreciation.”

Jenny didn’t believe any of this. She had an awful feeling that Carl had gone searching for whatever he could take and had found the underground room.

“So right there in the kitchen, there are suddenly these two wood boxes, and Pappa Cat tells me I can take whichever I want. So I look in one, and there’s this little book of cat pictures. Not too fucking exciting. I look in the other and—”

Carl was too wound up to finish. Instead, he opened the burlap sack. Even in the dim light Jenny could see the deep red fire of rubies, the diamonds’ rainbow light.

“Carl,” she said. “Think for a minute. What are you going to do with those? You try to sell them, and people are going to want to know where they came from.”

“I’ll say they were a gift,” Carl said. “They were.”

“You’ll look like you looted the Vatican. I don’t think jewels like those are going to be so easy to sell.”

“Jen, I don’t have to put them up for auction at Sotheby’s. There are private buyers, and I’ll find ’em. My days of worrying about money are finito!”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “If you were just a little more careful, you wouldn’t have to worry—”

“I’m not careful,” Carl broke in. “You’ve known me for two years and you still don’t get that, do you? You’re the one who’s careful. I don’t like worrying about details. I want to go where and when I feel like it, buy whatever I goddamn well please and not even think about how I’ll pay for it tomorrow. I like living on the edge. And now that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” His voice softened. “I told you everything was gonna be all right, Jenny-o. You just didn’t believe me.”

Jenny knew that there was nothing she could say that he would hear. She wondered if there ever had been. “It’s kind of weird that none of the cats followed you out of town.”

“The cats are fine,” Carl assured her. “Cats always are. They don’t worry about tomorrow either.”

“I’m going to check on them,” Jenny said.

“Oh, now you want your sack of jewels, too, don’t you?” Carl jeered. “Instead of some little leather purse that only gives you forty thousand at a shot.”

“Oh, shut up,” Jenny muttered. She started for the bridge, stopping to pull a wild, white rose from the side of the stream, a final gift for the Lady. And that’s when she heard it, the sound of an ass braying. It came up near the cemetery. Livio’s flea-bitten donkey must have gotten loose.

She kept her eyes on the flower — circle within circle of pale white petals surrounding a delicate center of gold — until the braying stopped.

Carl, though, hadn’t looked away. He was staring at the cemetery where Sasha stood among the gravestones, her pale hair blown back by wind. This time she was dressed for Carl’s world, wearing a short, tight black dress; her long, perfect legs in spike heels and black fishnet stockings. “Carlo,” she said, one hand beckoning.

Carl stood transfixed, like a starving man who’d suddenly found a banquet table laden with food.

Jenny stepped between them, deliberately placing herself in Carl’s line of sight. “For God’s sake, Carl, listen to me now even if you never listen to me again. She’s not what you think. She’s dangerous!”

If Carl heard her, he gave no sign. He was mumbling something about “being together without end.”

“Grazie, Jenny,” Sasha said, “molte grazie. I knew you’d bring him to me. I told you we were alike. He’s scorned you, so now you’ll see to it that he gets what he deserves.”

“No one deserves you,” Jenny said. “He’s a mess, but he’s not evil and—”

“So you do still love him. I told you. L’amour dure sans fin.”

“No,” Jenny said, flustered. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t want to see him hurt.”

Sasha gave her a pitying look. “An unrealistic expectation from one who’s normally so practical.” As she spoke, Sasha’s voice rose, becoming light and cool and sickeningly familiar. It was as though her voice were the same cold wind that had blown through Jenny earlier, the wind that Jenny so welcomed, that had severed her from Carl.

“You see, I helped you, Jenny-o. Because I knew that you would help me.”

“Help you? I wouldn’t—”

“You already have,” Sasha assured her. Her voice became a command, “Carlo, adesso! Now!”

Carl’s trance broke at Sasha’s words. He dropped the sack of gems and ran toward the cemetery. He didn’t even bother to climb the gate; he scaled it with a leap. Jenny had never seen him move so fast, so fluidly.

Where’s his angel now? Jenny wondered as she started after him. She didn’t want him anymore. She knew that. But she couldn’t leave him to—

“You have to.” The black and white appeared so suddenly that Jenny could have sworn he materialized from the twilight. “Let him go,” the cat said. “You didn’t give him to her and you can’t save him. Carl has made his choice, and goes willingly to his fate.”

“You don’t understand!” Jenny was nearly hysterical. “I felt her inside me today. It was when I finally let go of Carl, and now she—”

“She is strega,” the black and white said firmly. “It is her gift to make you believe what is not true. She will live inside you only as a memory, as we all do. No more.”

Jenny felt tears streaming down her cheeks. “But Carl—”

The cat nodded toward the two figures in the cemetery, already ethereal against the darkening sky. “There she told the truth. They always have been intertwined. You must let him go.”

The sun was sinking beneath a row of cypress trees on the hill as Sasha opened her arms and Carl stepped into her embrace.

Jenny never saw her arms close around him, never saw the expression of agony on Carl’s face, never saw him struggling to free himself as he breathed his last. She never saw the two fantasme fade into the dusk. Her view was blocked by an old farm truck with huge rounded fenders and a merry horn. It cruised slowly down the road and rolled to a stop directly in front of her. Livio was at the wheel, a jaunty tweed cap on his head. He leaned out the open window and said something in Italian to the tuxedo cat.

The black and white rubbed his leg against Jenny’s thigh and purred. “Ah, Jenny,” he said, sounding pleased. “Livio would like to offer you a ride. He says he is going to Firenze.”

“The Cats of San Martino” is based on an Italian fairy tale that is found in Italo Calvino’s collection. An English version appears in collections by Andrew Lang and Katherine Briggs. In its original form, the story features a good sister who goes to “live with the cats” (an old expression that once referred to girls who had run away from home), and the bad sister who follows her. Steiber’s modern version of the tale was inspired by a spring sojourn in an old farmhouse in Tuscany, and the lively four-footed denizens of the village of San Martino.